1879 Facts About Champagne and Other Sparkling Wines

The Epernay Establishments.

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Chandon, the yield from them is utterly inadequate to the enor– mous demand which the great Epernay firm are annually called upon to supply, and large purchases have to be made by their agents from the growers throughout the Champagne. The wine thus secured, as well as that grown by the firm, is duly mixed together in such proportions as will ensure lightness with the requisite vinosity, and fragrance combined with effervescence, a thorough amalgamation being effect ed by stirring up the wine with long p~les provided with_fan-shaped ends. If the vintage be indifferent in quality the firm have scores of huge tuns :filled with the yield of more favoured seasons to fall back upon to ensure any deficiencies of character and flavour being supplied. The casks of wine to be blended are r aised from the cellars, half a dozen at a time, by means .of a lift provided with an endless chain, and worked by the steam-engine of which we have already spoken. They are emptied, through traps in the floor of the room above, into the huge vats which, st anding upon a raised platform, reach almost to the ceiling. From t hese vats the fluid is allowed to flow through hose into rows of casks stationed below. ' Before being bottled the wine r eposes for a certain time, is next duly racked and again blended, and is eventually conveyed through silver-plated · pipes int o oblong reservoirs, each fitted with a dozen syphon-taps, so arranged that directly the bottle slipped on to one of them becomes full the wine ceases to flow. Upwards of 200 workpeople are employed in the salle cle tirage at Messrs. Moet and Ch.andon's, which, while the operation of bottling is going on, presents a scene of bewildering activity. Men and lads are gathered round the syphon-taps briskly removing the bottles as they become filled, and supplanting them by .empty ones. Other lads hast en to transport the filled bottles on trucks to the corkers, whose so-called "guillotine" machines send the corks home with a sudden thud. The corks being secured with ag1·ajes the bottles are placed in large flat baskets called manettes, and wheeled away on trucks, the quar ts being deposited in the cellars by means of lifts~ while the pints slide